Posts Tagged ‘Defense’

Posted on November 9, 2015, 10:42 am, by Bill Rouse, under Challenges.

Our operatives have uncovered the motivation and reasoning behind various presidential candidates now emphasizing what many of them are calling the “new realty.” This reality relates to their personal histories, climate change, economic prospects, and so on. All of the candidates have “repositioned” their personal stories to gain voter support. One candidate, born to immense […]

The organizers of the 3rd International Symposium on Engineering Systems asked me to provide a brief story of my journey to engineering systems — how I came to be at this Symposium on this June evening in Delft. The idea is to stimulate your thinking and perhaps motivate you to share your stories during dinner […]

A few months ago, a colleague asked me, “What if our big idea does not get approved by the powers at be?” I said, “We will start an insurgency and just do it anyway.” We are still waiting for approval, and may get it, but we are quickly progressing despite the lack of formal blessing. […]

I recently visited the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. One can question the whole “City on the Hill” imagery, but the Great Communicator was undoubtedly able to evoke a positive emotional response from me three decades after the original narrative. How does this compare to the Current Communicator? Both Presidents inherited troubled economies– one could easily […]

National defense, and acquisition of weapon systems in particular, has long been a target of transformation. The Packard Commission in 1985 provided a very reasonable set of recommendations for reforming defense acquisition processes. These recommendations resulted in relatively minor changes. Blue ribbon committees both before and after the Packard Commission had comparably minor impacts. President […]

It is difficult to transform a large enterprise. Leaders of many private sector enterprises have told me that their toughest job is managing the enterprise they have while trying to create the enterprise they want. Not surprisingly, the failure rate is very high, as illustrated by 200% turnover in the Fortune 500 in the past […]

Stories of Change

My focus in this blog is fundamental change. In particular, I will write about fundamental change of complex organizational systems. The series of entries will report on a 20-year journey working globally with well over one hundred enterprises and several thousand executives and senior managers. I will also provide observations and comments on contemporary news and events.